Thursday, 10 February 2011

Ana and Christof's Wedding

No sooner am I back from Vaujany than I have to fly off to Austria for a wedding. Ana and Christof are good friends of mine and a great couple.
They organised their wedding at very short notice (no she's not pregnant, that's just how they are), and it was very good.

My journey started in Stansted, where I got on an easyjet plane to Ljubljana. It was a pretty decent flight. I'd packed lightly to avoid the expensive luggage charges, so basically had ski gear and a change of underwear, some jeans and my suit. It all fitted in my carry-on case, which made the journey quite smooth.
On landing in Ljubljana, I wanted a coffee but had no idea what currency they used, so thought it best not to risk it. Turns out they use Euros. Exchanged some texts with Stephen (Ana's friend who I never met before) and we met up and made our way to the car hire desk.
Problem number 1 - an unexpected 72€ for random stuff for driving in Austria. Snow chains and the like.
Problem number 2 - apparently a toll for the tunnel (not a problem in the end, see below), and a 7.90€ fee for a Vignette, needed to drive on Austrian motorways.
Problem number 3 - the biggest problem we faced - my TomTom Navigator only has maps for Western Europe, and Slovenia counts as Eastern Europe. This meant TomTom was unable to find a reference point to begin navigation.

We just headed in what we thought was the right direction. Turned around and went the other way. Turned around again and headed for the motorway. I saw a sign for Klagenfurt and thought that was in Austria, so headed there, on the basis that once there the navigation would work. This meant we avoided the toll tunnel, taking the scenic route instead. We got there later and all was well.
On the Friday night Ana and Christof had organised a night in a local bar, with awesome goulash soup. Yummy. There were quite a few of Ana's friends who I'd met once or twice there, so I didn't feel completely alone, and apparently a friend who I'd helped skating who recognised me but whose name I couldn't remember. I won't reveal her name just yet because it took me a day to work out what it was.
The next day, the wedding took place in a lovely little church on the mountainside. I can now confirm that a regular suit is not suitable attire for a mountain church. It was freezing, and I thought my toes were going to drop off. At one point I thought they had. The reception couldn't come soon enough!
After warming up indoors, and having made eye contact with mysterious skater girl several times during the wedding, we finally spoke to each other Turns out her name was Olga. She was pretty hot, and liked flirting with me, which was awesome. Alas, flirting was all it would be with Olga. It was a shame in a way because we spent the evening together, going through photos for Ana and Christof's on-the-fly wedding album, and generally had a good time.
We spent the whole of the next day skiing together. She's fun, and wants to come skiing again in March. Nothing was ever going to happen anyway, because she lives in Russia, which is rather inconvenient for finding a time to meet up and go for dinner or see a movie.

The return journey went fairly smoothly, but I was pleased to return home.